Challenge Accepted
by DriannaHarper
Summary: Prequel to 'Cloudy With a Chance of Darcy', and 'Tasers, and Soldiers, and Captains, oh my' Because, apparently, these want to be written backwards. Steve's roommate and his best friend first meet. She's barefoot, and he's kind of a basket case. Rated M because Darcy has a potty mouth. (Part 1 of the Couch Series)


Bucky hadn't known what to expect when he showed up at Steve's apartment for the first time. Steve had warned him that he had a roommate, someone else that worked at the Tower, but in the Science Labs with people he didn't know. What he hadn't expected was for a small but sassy woman to open the door, take one long look at him, roll her eyes, and leave it propped open for him while she wandered away.

"Yo, Steve, I think one of your strays is at the door. I'm'a go be somewhere else while you guys figure this out. Nice to not-meet you, btw, I'm Darcy."

She waves at him before meandering down a hall, and he's so confused that he stays in the open door way until Steve ushers him in

"Sorry, Buck. That's Darcy, she's always like that. It's… refreshing."

"Not the word I'd use, punk. Is it okay, me being here?"

Steve frowns. "Of course, Darce and I already talked about it. She knows who you are, and what you went through. She's fine with you being here."

"I don't know if I should be around civilians, Stevie. I'm still a danger."

"We talked about all that. The Winter Solder, and the risks, and the fact that you'd probably show up here. I think her exact words were, 'fuck that assassin b.s., can the guy beat me at Mario 2?"

"I… didn't know people still played that."

"That's 'cause they don't," Darcy said as she sauntered back down the hall. "It's the weakest of the Mario's by far. But I OWN that shit. So, can you beat me?"

"I don't know. I'll give it my best try, though."

"Awesome. You eat yet?" she asks, head already buried in the amazing game collection she and Steve have amassed. He likes Halo and Call of Duty. She likes games where she gets to shoot monsters, or at least throw blue shells.

The pause that takes too long makes Darcy and Steve both stop and look at Bucky. They exchange looks, and finally Darcy stares down her roommate. "Four. Start with four. We'll go from there."

An hour later, she's fighting over Mario Kart with her roommates, three and a half pizzas have been devoured, and the Winter Soldier is on the floor in front of her couch with a slice of cold pizza clenched between his teeth as he tries to run Captain America off the racing strip.

Barnes wins more than he loses, but eventually the lack of sleep and a full belly start to catch up to him. He's more than a little uncomfortable with the silent exchange Darcy and Steve have, but finally, Steve calls it a night, and he's left alone with Darcy.

They get through one more race before she cracks a yawn. He can take a sign when he sees one.

"So, I'll be getting on my way."

"Or you could do the other thing," she states. "That couch you're sitting in front of? It's not the most comfortable thing in the world. But it is available if you want to crash it."

"I… don't want to get in the way of what you guys have."

Darcy snorts. "Dude, wrong tree? You're barking at it. Steve and I are NOT a thing. He has a thing he won't admit to for a friend of ours, and he's being stupid about it. We agreed to room together cause we ARE friends, and just friends. You aren't making anything weird, here. You can go if you wanna, but you aren't making anything funky if you want to kip on the couch."

She starts gathering up the pizza boxes, and shifting the leftovers to one box for the fridge. The lack of answer from their visitor makes her feel as though she should keep busy, so she carries their glasses into the kitchen to rinse and load in the dishwasher. By the time she's done with the last of the mindless chores, she's ready to face whatever-

Rounding the kitchen, she finds a Solider passed out on her couch. He's stretched along the length of it, one arm over his eyes, obviously down for the count.

She turns the lights off except for the soft glow from the kitchen, and tiptoes over to the couch. Tugging her grandmother's throw off the back, she drapes it on the exhausted man. When she starts to pull away, she feels a hand clamp down around her wrist.

Looking up into a wide gaze, she stills. "Sargent Barnes. I'm Darcy, Steve's friend, remember? You fell asleep on our couch; I was just getting you a blanket. Do you remember?"

It takes a minute, but finally he nods. He lets go of her wrist and starts to curl in on himself. She sits down right next to him, so he can't.

"Don't you fucking dare," she says.

He doesn't move, but he's tense enough that she knows he's listening.

"Don't start that guilt shit. I read the files, okay? I know what you did. I know what they MADE you do. And you can feel as guilty as you want anywhere else. But HERE? This is a no go zone, buddy. Me? I don't think you have any damned thing to apologize for. But I can see why you'd think you do."

Her hand curls up to run through his hair. "Steve asked me, if I'd be okay with you showing up." She can feel him tense further. "I said it was fine, as long as you a, didn't hog my snacks, or b, were willing to start a prank war with Clint. So figure out which one you want to do, cause I'm weirdly obsessive about my junk food."

The tension doesn't let up, and she sighs. "Sweetie, I'm not scared of you. I probably should be, you have the potential to be really scary. But right now, I think you just need us. Steve and I? We're here, and we aren't going away. Once you go back to sleep, I'll go back to bed, but we're making waffles in the morning, and you don't want to miss Steve's waffles. They are a work of art. So either go back to sleep, or start talking, or deal with me petting you, but I'm going to keep being here."

Darcy sat, perched on the edge of her couch, for close to half an hour, running her hand through her roommate's best friend's hair. She takes the time to reflect on how she got to this point. From her choices in high school, then college, then taking an internship that landed her tazering a god. She did Science! with Jane in Stark Tower, and lived with Captain America. This was NOT the weirdest thing she'd dealt with.

It was the first thing she didn't know how to fix. Give her an Einstein-Rosen bridge. She could handle that. She was GOING to figure out Stark's weird ass computer that sounded English. Seriously, why was answering service, like, all butlerish? She'd Scooby-Doo the answer to that.

Super Hot, Super Crazy Soldiers? One wasn't enough, they had to give her two?

Challenge Accepted.

Once she was convinced Barnes was asleep, she wandered back to her own room. After all, Steve's waffles WERE amazing, and one couldn't fully appreciate them while being groggy. She gave a brief thought to closing and locking her door. She had a couple of soldiers with severe PTSD sleeping a few feet away, and one of those men also had a long ass way to go before he even felt human again. Both were dangerous.

She left the door cracked, so she could hear any movement in the apartment. One or the other might need an application of hot chocolate and marshmallows in the night.

 _Authors note: I realize I made a slight assumption in the earlier stories I was writing based on one of MY favorite stories. In The Turing Test, by Nienna Nir, it's explained that JARVIS dumbs himself down until he trusts someone. So, Darcy wouldn't know he was more than a fancy answering machine until much later in their relationship. But being who she is, once she figures him out, she would immediately make him one of her best friends._


End file.
